


Could You Give Me A Hand

by Oftheoldendays



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Domestic, Emotional, F/M, Family, Fix-It, Fluff, Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Lost Limb, M/M, Morgan POV, PTSD, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Blip, Prosthetic Arm, Some violence depicted, Steve needs a talking to, Team as Family, Tony POV, Tony does not forgive everything that happened in civil war, Trauma, maybe someone else's pov, multi-chapter fic, prosthetic, who knows at this point - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23932540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oftheoldendays/pseuds/Oftheoldendays
Summary: Apparently wielding the gauntlet and poofing Thanos and his group of weird soldiers out of existence was a little much to put on a human, and his arm had suffered for it. Could have been worse, Stephen told him. Could have died.Or: Tony survives the snap, and what comes after.
Relationships: Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe) & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Tony Stark & Stephen Strange
Comments: 1
Kudos: 51





	1. It's Okay to Cry

**Author's Note:**

> The whole story will not be in Morgan's POV! This is the introductory chapter to a new multi-chapter fic with a vague outline. Just looking to fix all the things I'm pissed about. Kudos and comments appreciated but not required!

Morgan was smart. She knew that. Pretty much everyone knew that. Daddy told her all the time, and mommy said she was smarter than the people mommy had to work with sometimes, and daddy always laughed at that. Morgan hadn’t met very many of them, but they always talked weird to her, like she wasn’t smart, and she didn’t appreciate that.

Anyway, Morgan was smart. Very smart. Smart enough to be very confused when all of a sudden daddy went away and mommy stayed home and then the sky got all dark and mommy left and Morgan was with a babysitter, of all things. Smart enough to be worried when Happy screeched his big car into the driveway, running over daddy’s petunias, and picked her up in a big hug, telling her everything would be fine soon, it would all be fine soon, but they had to go to the hospital. 

Morgan was smart enough to know that hospitals were the kind of place people died in. And daddy, laying in the white bed with his arm gone, didn’t look so great. Morgan only got to see him for a second before mommy and a new boy named Peter pulled her away to the waiting room. 

Morgan was smart enough to figure out that they weren’t telling her the whole truth. She saw them, covered in dirt and blood, clothes ripped and eyes hard, and knew that they had done superhero type stuff. Instead of saying any of this out loud, instead of letting the grownups know how much she knew, she just grabbed her mommy in a tight hug and held Peter’s hand. He kept crying, just a little, and then wiping it away really fast, which is not what you were supposed to do when you’re sad. 

“Peter.” She finally whispered to him, mommy busy talking to a doctor. He looked up at her, wiped away the tears even faster. “Peter.” She admonished, “you’re not supposed to hide when you’re crying. Daddy says that crying is important, and hiding when you need help is something only stupid people do.”

Technically Morgan wasn’t supposed to say stupid, but daddy told her it was okay when it was really true, so long as she didn’t say it to their faces. 

“I don’t think you’re a stupid people.” She added, just in case Peter had misunderstood. He smiled bigger at her, then, let a few tears fall out. Maybe he was hurt? Or maybe he was scared, like she was. Whatever it was, she reached out and grabbed his hand again, just in case.

She’d always wanted a brother. 

Morgan woke up later, when the sky was dark and most of the superheroes had left to shower and get food, and realized she was alone. She wasn’t actually, cause there was Happy sitting next to her, but he was asleep, too, and snoring. Morgan crinkled her nose at him and got up slowly. Her body felt all crickey from sleeping in the chair. 

Where was daddy? He had been down the hallway, near a big vase of sunflowers…there! Slowly and quietly, careful not to wake up Happy, Morgan snuck down the hallway to the sunflowers. Mommy wasn’t anywhere around, and neither was Peter. Maybe they were finally getting a doctor to look at their ouchies, which had been pretty bad. When Morgan made it to the door, she reached up and pulled on the handle, slipped inside the room, and closed the door behind her. 

Daddy was still there, in that bed, a big white bandage covering the spot his arm used to be. He had bandages on his head, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt because there were bandages all over his chest and stomach, too. He was asleep, a tube stuck in his throat, which didn’t look comfortable. Morgan walked up to him slowly, making sure she didn’t wake him up. Daddy looked like he needed his sleep. 

Carefully Morgan grabbed onto the bed and pulled herself up, crawled over Daddy’s legs and up to his face. She reached out her little hands and touched his cheeks, leaning in real close. 

“Hi daddy. I think you need to sleep now, but when you’re better, we can go home.” She didn’t like the hospital much. It was noisy and quiet at the same time, and it smelled weird. Even daddy smelled weird. But it was still her daddy, so she wasn’t too worried. 

Mostly she was just really, really tired still, so she curled up next to him, laid her head below where his arm should have been, put her hand on his chest so she could feel his heart, and fell asleep.


	2. He Held On Tight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course, then the pain started and he was made acutely aware of the fact that if he was dead, this was hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is chapter two, folks! The story hasn't even really begun yet, but I needed this like I needed to breathe. All mistakes are most definitely mine, and I will try to rectify them if I can!  
> Also just made an entire timeline for this story, so that was exciting. Anyway, stay safe!

They’d had to cut it off. They had tried to keep it, of course, done everything they could. With modern medicine where it was, and with the best doctors in the world helping, they probably could have saved it. Unfortunately, there was “magic” or, as Tony preferred to call it, unknown science, involved. Apparently wielding the gauntlet and poofing Thanos and his group of weird soldiers out of existence was a little much to put on a human, and his arm had suffered for it. Could have been worse, Stephen told him. Could have died.

Of course, this entire conversation happened while Tony was in excruciating pain, lying in a hospital bed thinking about the battle he had just ended, where buildings were falling around him and fires starting. Pepper had held his head in her lap, tears slipping down her dirty cheeks, and Peter had knelt beside him, pale as a ghost. They were all talking to each other, Stephen cradling Tony’s arm and snapping back at them. Bruce was looking more Hulk than he had before, which was concerning, but at least Thanos was well and truly gone. What else mattered? Morgan was safe. Peter was alive. Pepper was right here with him, just like she always was. So nothing else mattered. Not his arm, not the gauntlet that had seemingly disappeared from its place on his hand, and certainly not his life. He would die, but he would die knowing that everything was going to be okay. And God, he was so tired.

He blacked out, then, right when it felt like the pain was overcoming all of his senses, and though he could tell that they were still yelling, he couldn’t hear a word.

It was thick, the sleep he fell into, and cloying. The air around felt harsh and tasted of blood. His arms were heavy, the pain like a glow in a dark room. He could still feel Pepper’s hand on his forehead, her voice whispering sweet nothings to him. Tony was so damn glad that Morgan wasn’t there to see her daddy like this. Besides, he knew her face well enough to picture it even in his sleep.

Time stood still, and yet it sped past him. He was being pushed by it, pulled by it, stomped all over. Here and there were moments he could see—sirens, and arms holding him firm, and the white of hospital halls, and blonde hair tickling his nose—but none of it made sense. Was this death? Just moments, repeated again and again, but never the ones he wanted?

His heart stopped.

The weight on Tony’s chest was familiar as the brown, knotted hair on his cheeks. She smelled like bubblegum shampoo and fresh cut grass. Small, so small, and heartbeat just a light thud against his side. If this was heaven, holding his little girl for all of eternity, then it wasn’t too bad.

Of course, then the pain started and he was made acutely aware of the fact that if he was dead, this was hell. It _hurt._ His chest, and his head, and his arm—well. Not really? He tried to lift it up, to cradle Morgan, but she was lying in the space his arm should have been, which meant his arm was somewhere else, which meant it was no longer attached to his body where it _should_ have been, which was disconcerting. He took a moment, to think about that. Lifted his right arm. Nothing to lift. Swung it to the side. Nothing to swing. Huh.

So he tried to speak, tried to talk to someone about the absolutely bizarre experience that was feeling like you had two arms when you only had one, but then he recognized the tube in his throat and the little ones in his wrist and decided that, altogether, this sucked.

Morgan sighed in her sleep, nuzzled into his chest. Okay, so maybe not _all_ of it sucked. And really, he could figure out a way to get a nurse up there to help with the intubation, but mostly he was still so bone tired and he just wanted to sleep. Falling asleep to the smell of bubblegum wasn’t really half bad.

When Tony woke up next, Morgan was gone, which was wrong, wrong, _wrong._ Tony felt his heart rate tick up, his body grow rigid, and could vaguely hear some incessant beeping. People rushed into the room, held him down, touched him, and touched him, and none of them were Morgan or Pepper, and where were they? Where were they? He rolled his hands into fist (his hand, just his hand, just one), and felt for dust, ashes, anything, but there was nothing but the scratchy sheets beneath him. Opening his mouth to scream, Tony felt clogged up, couldn’t let out a sound, and someone was yelling, yelling, yel—

“Tony! You have to calm down or they will sedate you.”

Oh. Stephen.

Wait. Stephen.

“Are you in my head?” He asked, deadpan.

There was a pause, and how could he tell that it was an unsure pause when the whole conversation was happening telepathically?

“Yes.” Stephen said, a bit testy, but also a bit relieved, which wasn’t that sweet? Old guy was worried. “I wasn’t that worried. Now calm down and let them extubate you before you choke on your own larynx.”

Ah. Good old Stephen. Reading minds and being a bastard.

Something about it was so absolutely normal and weird at the same time that it actually broke him out of his wild panicking, allowing the nurse to extubate him, which hurt like a _mother._

It was out, though, it was out. “Where’s Morgan?” He asked. He could still smell her shampoo in the air, which meant she had been here, and his eyes were open now, but he couldn’t see any dust, so probably that hadn’t happened—

“Daddy!”

Oh, thank God.

Arms—Arm still week, and Tony just barely glanced over at the bandages on his right arm, the rest of it gone, he reached out to his daughter who barreled with all the energy of a five year old up onto the bed and into his arms. She held him so tight, like she knew, just knew that he needed this, needed to feel her alive and well in his arms, oh, thank God, thank God, thank God. He held her, buried his face in her tiny neck, breathed in the bubblegum, breathed out the pain.

Cool hands circled his head, a mouth he knew so well breathing kisses onto his check and over his eyelids and nose. He smiled into it, leaned into Pepper, who was shaking just a little with those tears she never let herself cry. What else did he need?

But then another hand, hesitant, unsure, touched his back lightly, and Tony lifted his head from Morgan’s hair and looked and oh. Peter. Tony felt choked, but not like he had before. This choking was cleansing, was new, was passionate. Peter was alive. The kid he had killed was here, alive and breathing and so bright and bruised, but when wasn’t the kid bruised? Tony moved his arm from Morgan and reached up to grab Peter’s face, felt the sting of tears in his eyes and he would have wiped them away but he had been trying to teach Morgan that it was okay to feel whatever you feel so instead he let them fall.

He let them fall.

He took a breath.

He held on tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, and you can check me out on tumblr at passesinthemorning. I'm a pretty normal weirdo there, but I love friends.


End file.
